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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299705">Stone by Stone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin'>SenkoWakimarin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Movies - Nolan), Joker (2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>COVID19, Control Issues, M/M, Mercy Killing, Pandemics</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:15:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,140</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23299705</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joker just wants control.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthur Fleck/Joker (DCU)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stone by Stone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/gifts">mr-finch (soubriquet)</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <i>Ja ich schaffe dir ein Heim<br/>Und du sollst Teil des Ganzen sein</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Stein um Stein mauer ich dich ein</i><br/>Stein um Stein<br/>Ich werde immer bei dir sein
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Joker is not a possessive man.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Things are things, and people are infinitely expendable and mutable and there’s really no point in trying to hold onto a damn thing when the whole world is eternally shifting through one chaotic mess to another.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joker is not possessive, but there are certain types of control he likes to have, certain people and things he likes control over. Not for comfort, per se, but… something, yes, something about acquiescence to his desire over the natural inclination for anything else. Having someone stay when they would rather flee, walk when they’d prefer to run, hurt when they could be comfortable -- not possessive, but he does like that </span>
  <em>
    <span>control.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not something he cares about having over most people. Most people don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>matter</span>
  </em>
  <span>, they’re like pigeons in Central Park. They’re background noise, they’re worth noticing only by their groupings and constant motion. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Arthur</span>
  </em>
  <span> matters. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s the key, that’s where it </span>
  <em>
    <span>changes,</span>
  </em>
  <span> when people start to matter. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usually, when people matter, it’s a fun game of how to speed them to a messy end. They matter because they’re in the way, or they offend him with their own attempts to impose control. He manipulates with violence, he seizes them by the throat and feeds them fear until they’ll do whatever it is it tickles him to see. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur, though, is </span>
  <em>
    <span>different.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not only does Joker want to possess, to keep and hold and </span>
  <em>
    <span>own</span>
  </em>
  <span> Arthur, he wants that long-term. He wants it to clutch and hold until </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> decides he's finished with it. Control not just over Arthur, but over the relationship. Over how and when</span>
  <span> is </span>
  <em>
    <span>if </span>
  </em>
  <span>it</span>
  <span> ever ends.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And the thing is, Arthur lets him have all that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Arthur struggles, there's an air of willingness under it. An air of struggling just for the fun of making Joker work a little harder, the guise of having agency or opinions just to see Joker snarl and use a little force. The thing is, Arthur </span>
  <em>
    <span>likes </span>
  </em>
  <span>being controlled, he likes being </span>
  <em>
    <span>owned.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wants to </span>
  <em>
    <span>belong </span>
  </em>
  <span>to someone, and Joker's all too happy to haul on his leash. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A city in lockdown is less fun than Joker would have thought. Gotham had always been drenched in violence, opportunists looking for any way to impose their will on the city, the world. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the start of the pandemic, that had held true. People squabbling over space, over food, over little things like toilet paper and soap. No more manners, no more order. The police tried to fight it, then the police started getting sick. The mobs tried to ride the lack of police presence, then the mobsters started getting sick.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a fun bit of lawlessness, for a minute, a good three weeks of rising chaos. Law broke down to a certain lovely extent, people at each other's throats in a way Joker never could have managed on that scale.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then the fear took hold. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>People stayed inside, to keep from meeting people who were sick. The government paid for hotel rooms for Gotham's homeless, people donated supplies they were hoarding but realized they couldn't reasonably sell for profit. They started </span>
  <em>
    <span>looking after </span>
  </em>
  <span>one another. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur didn't like staying inside. Arthur wanted to be out in the empty streets as bad as Joker wanted to be, wanted to run them, wanted to see what Gotham looked like empty, the way no one got to see it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In any other circumstance, Joker would have allowed it. Control doesn't mean keeping someone unhappy, and he loved seeing the way Arthur got, out in the world, riding the kinesis of his own manic energy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The coughing, though, made Joker uneasy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>uneasy, most times. Things happen, he reacts. Bad things happen, it's </span>
  <em>
    <span>exciting,</span>
  </em>
  <span> a new force to fight, a new chance to thrill in the live-or-die reality of the world at its best.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur, coughing like all the moisture in his body has been sucked out, not the phlegmy, disgusting hack of a long-time smoker in the morning, clearing last night's pack from where it had settled at the bottom of his lungs -- that made him </span>
  <em>
    <span>uneasy.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The fever, when it hit, didn't help.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joker wants control.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joker wants to decide how this ends, </span>
  <em>
    <span>if </span>
  </em>
  <span>it ends, </span>
  <em>
    <span>when </span>
  </em>
  <span>it ends. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Curling on a bed with his arms around Arthur's narrow body, holding him in a thin-walled apartment and listening to Arthur's breath wheeze in and out, slow and steady as the kid burns up in his arms, he is not in control. He's still, he's quiet, but he's not in control.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gotham’s first deaths come overnight. Arthur smokes through the news, coughing into his elbow, eyes glazed and cheeks bright red. He laughs when the anchor says the death toll is expected to climb ‘exponentially’ through Gotham’s most vulnerable communities; he laughs until he chokes, leaning back against Joker’s chest and smoking like it’s going out of style.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It should be boring, trapped in this depressing shithole with a man so feverishly out of it he hardly seems to realize when they’ve moved from the bed to the couch or vice versa. He barely eats, laughs weakly at things Joker doesn’t see or hear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joker can’t find a good reason to leave. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he kisses Arthur, the kid arches into it, focused for a few seconds at a time before he sags in exhaustion. No matter how much water Joker forces down Arthur’s throat, his mouth is always dry, bitter and sharp. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no noise in the halls these days. No one running. No one shouting, laughing, sobbing. Everyone has disappeared, quiet and coughing their own exhausted lungs apart. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Arthur sips water when it’s given. Picks at food if Joker makes it and forces him to. Mostly he sleeps, he smokes, he moves, compliantly, living room to bed, bed to living room, happy to allow Joker to steer. Perfect compliance. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Should be a dream.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sitting on the end of the bed and toying with a knife -- the knife Arthur liked best, liked the tease of it -- Joker can’t quite figure out if this is the set up or the punchline of a very tiresome joke. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he pulls Arthur into his lap, Arthur comes willingly. Wraps his arms about Joker’s shoulders, leans against him, a heavy, feverish weight. Arthur coughs and coughs and Joker hasn’t felt so much as a tickle yet.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The knife slides up Arthur’s back and he giggles, shivering. He purrs some lazy line of praise, sweet right to the finish. His forehead is burning against Joker’s collar, his breath is a furnace blast. He laughs, eyes closed, when Joker puts the knife to his throat, accepting, delighted. Relieved, maybe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A punchline, Joker decides, letting the blade bite in. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s just glad at least </span>
  <em>
    <span>one</span>
  </em>
  <span> of them gets to laugh at it.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <i>Stein um Stein mauer ich dich ein</i><br/>Stein um Stein<br/>Und keiner hört dich schreien
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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